THE Garden Committee had met to discuss the earth; not the whole earth, the terrestrial globe, but the bit of it that had been stolen from the Gardens in the Square.
The three members of the Committee were the big gun, as Lucas the gardener called Admiral Sir Peter Percy-Latham, who lived at Number Twenty-nine, the little gun, Mr. Donaldson, who had the ground-floor flat at Number Forty, and Miss Angela Chesney from Number Eleven. To Lucas, Angela was not a big or little gun, she was the gun; she ran the Committee, she ran the Gardens. “And she won’t let us have wallflowers, says they’re common. I like wallflowers,” said the Admiral, but behind Angela’s back; when she was present he deferred to her, as did Mr. Donaldson; Lucas looked only at her; it was like a court round the queen, thought Olivia. Olivia, Miss Chesney, was Angela’s queer, dark, elder sister, who often attended her. They all stood looking at the holes, round pits of holes that had been made in the shrub bed at one end of the Gardens.
“It’s the Street children,” said Angela. She did not mean any street but the Street that ran behind the Square down to the river, Catford Street.
Mortimer Square, gracious and imposing, with its big houses, stood, like many other London squares, on the edge of a huddle of much poorer streets. That had always bothered Olivia. “It’s too rich,” she said, meaning the Square, “and too poor,” meaning Catford Street. It was always Catford Street she saw in contrast to the Square, but nowadays neither was as rich or poor as Olivia thought. The Square had gone down, its big houses were mostly divided into flats, as could be seen when the lights went on at night; probably the only whole houses were the admiral’s, the Miss Chesneys’, and the one at the corner that was the strange embassy of one of the lesser South American States. Some of the houses had not been painted for years, some of them were even noisy—there was a dancing school at Number Three, though Angela had protested—while the poor streets had come up; Catford Street, for instance, though drab and shabby, with children playing in the street, an open-air market at the river end on Saturdays, and the Canal Works behind it, was proud and respectable. That did not prevent those same children from being a small plague in the Square, and “It’s the Street children, I’m sure of it,” said Angela.
“Looks as if an elephant had been standing in the bed,” said the admiral, looking at the holes.
“Three elephants,” said Olivia. “There are twelve holes.”
“Be quiet, Olivia,” said Angela. “It isn’t funny. Things are too expensive these days for it to be funny. First the shears, then all my beautiful irises!”
They were not Miss Angela’s irises, but the admiral let it pass. “Band of hooligans,” he said.
Mr. Donaldson said nothing but then he never did say anything, which was a disappointment; Angela had chosen him to sit on the committee because he worked for the Royal Horticultural Society. “That should be useful,” said Angela, but so far nothing useful or otherwise had come from Mr. Donaldson, and it was Angela who said, in her quick, decisive way, “We shall have to get the police.”
“Surely if it’s children we can catch ’em ourselves,” said the admiral. “It must be children, but what did they want it for?”
“They sell earth to the mews houses for window boxes,” said Angela. “People shouldn’t encourage it. If they want earth they can buy it at the Army and Navy Stores.”
“But,” said the admiral, looking at the holes, “can it be children? How did they cart it away?”
“They ought to have a medal for persistence,” said Olivia. They all looked at her, and she blushed.
“Olivia, it’s not funny, and it must be stopped,” said Angela, and she pronounced, “Lucas must sleep in the shed.”
The shed was at the far end of the Gardens, lonely and draughty and cold. Lucas shivered.
“Mr. Donaldson, do you agree?”
Mr. Donaldson nodded.
“Admiral?” She whipped them all in and it was settled.
“Supposing it’s one of those gangs?” said Lucas. “They’re big boys, some of them, and tough. They’ve got razors, I’ve seen them,” quavered Lucas.
“I will give you a whistle,” said Angela.
“There was a boy here, from the Street, sent to Borstal for using a knife. I don’t like it,” said Lucas.
“I think,” said Olivia, “it’s a little boy or girl.”
“Nonsense,” said Angela. “No little boy or girl could carry all that earth.”
But Olivia knew they had; while the others were talking she had seen, under a bush, a footprint that no one had smoothed away. It was a very small footprint. Olivia had scuffed it out with her shoe.